Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (61 page)

Mary Ann followed him, for a crowd had by this time collected to admire the horse that had come down the hill at a gallop, as the postman, who had seen him turn the corner, said, and a man was soon found to take the horse to the stables.

‘There ain’t no lights, sir,’ Mary Ann said, “cos I’ve been with the master all day, and that housemaid ain’t no use at all. The master’s precious bad, and he’s only holding up to see you. He’ll go after that, right dead away. Leastwise so that Southwold man said, but he ain’t of much account.’

In the doctor’s room there was only one candle lit, but even by that faint light Hollebone could see that his partner was fearfully changed. But before he could speak Dr Hammond opened his eyes, with a smile of recognition.

‘Thank God, you’ve come, Hollebone. Now I can die easy. I’m done for, I know it. Now be quiet. I shall be delirious in a moment. I’ve held up until you came, but it won’t do longer. You’ll find everything about the round in the day book. It’s pretty much as it was when you left. Don’t let Jenkins get a hold on the practice, that’s all. You can’t touch me. I’m in Jenkins’s hands. Professional etiquette, you know. But don’t let him take the bread out of the children’s mouths. For God’s sake don’t let the children starve. Send them to a decent school, and Gandon will pay you back when he’s a man. Promise not to let them go to the devil. It is mean of me, I know, but you are a rich man, and I’m a poor devil, without a penny in the world. Promise — oh, do, for the love of God.’

‘Yes, yes, I will, doctor,’ Hollebone said. Somehow his throat wouldn’t work well, but taking a fresh start, his voice came out with a jerk. ‘But you’ll get over it well enough.’

It was all he could find to say. But Dr Hammond laughed longer and louder than the remark seemed to call for.

‘Get over it!’ he said. ‘I like that — get over it! Look at my right hand. I can’t move it, and the left is broken. You know well enough what’s wrong with the right. I may be dead by to-morrow. My wife had a sister, and she went to the devil. She left this village, and no one ever heard of her again. I shouldn’t like that to happen to my children. Get over it! I like that,’ and he began to laugh again. ‘Get over it!’ he went on suddenly. ‘If I was like that old beggar next door — he isn’t a beggar, though, he’s a millionaire — well, he’s got enough diseases to kill nine cats, and that’s a hundred — yes, a hundred-and-eight lives — if I was him I might get over it. He
ought
to die every minute. Sir James Ditchett wrote to me a diagnosis of him — unprofessional of Sir James, very. But then he’s a millionaire, and he’s got a young wife, who’s nursing herself to death over him. Look here, Hollebone, you must take care of him. Don’t let him die, and he’ll pay like the devil, and it’ll all be so much for the children when I’ve — got over it! Damn it! I say, Cameron, I’m glad you’ve come to relieve me — ninety-eight cases of cholera in the regiment, and not a man’ll get over it. I’m in for something too. I’m going to invalid and go home. Once I’m out of this blasted climate I shall get over it. Ha, ha, ha!’ and he began to laugh, and laughed on until a gurgle in his throat stopped him suddenly. At that moment Mary Ann knocked at the door.

‘If you please, sir,’ she began, but Hollebone stopped her.

‘Look here,’ he said, ‘the delirium has come on. Has Dr Long — Jenkins, I mean, given a prescription in case it should?’

‘Yes, sir,’ he has, and Haner’s made it up, but that Southwold man ain’t—’

‘Never mind that,’ said Hollebone, interrupting her effusion of loyalty. ‘He’s Dr Hammond’s physician at present, I’m not. Not that either of us are of much good, I’m afraid.’

Mary Ann put her apron up to her eyes and began to cry loudly but Hollebone silenced her.

‘Look here, Mary Ann, either be quiet or leave the room. Give me Dr Jenkins’s prescription.

‘Oh, if you please, sir,’ said she, suddenly recollecting, ‘the gentleman from next door’s sent in to say he’s had another fit, and will you go in at once? They had to carry him home from the christenin’-tree.’

‘I’ll go at once,’ said Hollebone. ‘Look here, Mary Ann, you’re a sensible girl, and can do very well without me for the minute, just do what Dr Jenkins has told you to do. Is it the gentleman that has taken the house next door?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Mary Ann answered; ‘he’s mortal bad. They say if he had his rights he’d be dead long since, poor gentleman. But his wife do nurse him so, it’s quite painful to see. Never gives herself a moment of spare time, and up all night too. His servants say she’s the tears in her eyes all day long — and it do seem a pity, too, for her to kill herself over an old man that it’s common talk can’t live more than a few weeks at most. It’s a sinful shame, I say, and the sooner he’s dead the better. Not but what the old gentleman’s a nice enough old fellow in his way, and bound up the doctor’s arm in a way that made that Southwold man compliment him; but then
he
was only butterin’ him ‘cos he hoped to get him — but he ain’t. You have, sir, and that’s one comfort,’ and Mary Ann began to abuse the rival practitioner.

Hollebone had meanwhile been busying himself with Dr Hammond, in order to leave him comfortable, and at this point he departed without giving further heed to Mary Ann. At the door of the other house he was met by the man who had held his horse for him. The man was more complaisant now, and he said, —

‘Oh, if you’re the doctor, will you please walk upstairs? Mr and Mrs Kasker-Ryves are both in the bedroom.’

Ten stairs is hardly time to prepare oneself for a frightful shock. Yet that was all he had to prepare himself for the ordeal — besides,
they
creaked, and creaky stairs are distracting at any time. But in spite of that he managed to enter the room in a manner that excited the admiration of Mr Kasker-Ryves, who viewed him very keenly indeed. Mr Kasker-Ryves had had candles lighted to an enormous number, in order that the sudden blaze after his coming out of the darkness of the staircase might confuse him the more.

‘That man must have the nerves of a North American Indian, he don’t wince or move a hair, by Jove! How d’you do, Hollebone?’ he added aloud.’ Let me introduce Mrs Kasker-Ryves to you. My darling — why, what’s the matter?’

For Edith had fainted on the floor.

‘What luck,’ he chuckled to himself, but aloud, —

‘Good God! she’s fainted. She’s been tiring herself out with me, and she must have had a shock when I fainted myself this evening.

Would you be kind enough to lift her up and put her on the sofa, Mr Hollebone?’

For Hollebone was standing like a pillar of marble — and as white too. But at Mr Ryves’s request he started, and coming forward, put his arms round her, and tried to gather strength to lift her — tried once, but his strength failed him — tried a second time, and still his will refused him its aid, but, bracing himself for a final effort, he raised her, this time without feeling a weight in his arms at all — and there his love hung in the air. Her face, tranquil and almost colourless, her eyes closed, and a great cloud of brown - golden hair that had escaped its bonds rippling tumultuously on to the ground, she lay there in his arms — his ideal, of which he had dreamed night after night and day after day, his lifelong it seemed. It was a deadly sin in him to gaze at her, and he closed his eyes, as he staggered with her to the sofa, for fear of contamination. As he laid her down she opened her eyes, with a happy smile, like that on the face of a dreaming child, and caught at his hand as he drew himself roughly away.

‘Edith, my love,’ said Mr Kasker-Ryves, who had approached noiselessly with a glass of water in his hands, ‘drink this, it will do you good — sit still now. Mr Hollebone, there is the sal volatile on the table. Now a little eau-de-Cologne on her forehead. That’s it, thank you. Now she’ll do famously. Would you mind fanning her for a minute or two? I’m not strong enough to stand long.’

Acting on the words, he retired to his armchair and rang a handbell. Paton appeared.

‘Where is Mrs Kasker-Ryves’s maid?’ he asked.

And the man answered, —

‘She’s in next door, sir. You sent her in, if you remember, to see if she could be of any assistance to the doctor who is ill there.’

‘Thank you, Paton. Would you send in for her in about twenty minutes? Mrs Kasker-Ryves fainted a minute ago. She has been overworking herself with nursing me. She will be able to move in about twenty minutes, and Parker must be ready to put her to bed.’

The man retired, and at that moment Edith opened her eyes again, and was about to speak, when Mr Ryves stopped her.

‘Now, don’t speak, dearest,’ he said. ‘Keep quite quiet for a minute or two and you will be better. Now, Mr Hollebone, if you will favour me with your attention for a minute, I will tell you about my own case, and then will not detain you longer. I was attended until yesterday by your partner, Dr Hammond, but I suppose he has not been able to tell you anything about my state of health.’

Hollebone shook his head.

‘No,’ he said. ‘He was too ill, and I negligently omitted to look in the day book for his diagnosis. I will go and look at once.’

‘No, no,’ said Mr Kasker-Ryves, ‘don’t do that. I have Sir James Ditchett’s in the next room, and nothing of moment has happened since to me except that I fainted this afternoon. But that was mere weakness, because — because I happened to get tired. I tried to walk home, and had sent the carriage on in advance. Wait a minute. I will go and fetch Sir James’s diagnosis,’ and he left the room before Hollebone could interpose.

Edith was sitting on the sofa, and he could not help looking at her — the strain would otherwise have made him faint — but the look of black hatred that she threw after her husband caused a shudder to pervade his being. It seemed to him so fearful that the woman he had loved could have flamed such resentment upon anyone.

She had been steeling her eyes to look at his face, as one steels one’s eyes to look at the sun when it bursts from behind a heavy gold-rimmed cloud, and gazing at him hopelessly, as though anxious to note every change that the time had wrought in his face, and she saw nothing there but a faint shadow of loathing. Her face had been flushed with hope for the moment, but at the sight her eyes dilated and her face paled.

‘Oh, Clem,’ she said, with a queer catch in her voice, ‘you don’t — you don’t hate me? You can’t, you can’t be so unjust. I — I did it for you.’

Her lips were quivering so she could not speak; but he could see it, and he hung his head, knowing how he had misjudged her, feeling the reproach, and casting about in his agony for a look to express his craving for pardon, for to words he dare not trust himself. But she misunderstood his silence — perhaps wilfully or perhaps in fear that she had laid herself too much at his mercy — and a light came into her eyes, a proud, cold glitter, shot from under her eyelashes.

‘You — you are unjust,’ she said, but her face was a ghastly panic-stricken white. ‘You are not worthy of my love. Do you think it was
pleasant
, or that I have led a happy life since? I am only a year older than I was when I saw you last, but if I had foreseen such a year as this I have spent I would have used the present you made me. I should have gone to hell, but it would only have been a shifting of the fire from within my soul to without. You are mean, you are vile, but you were, and oh, you are still, all the world to me. Oh, Clem, you are more cruel to me even than
he
is.’

She spoke in a low voice and so fast that he hardly realised each sentence as she spoke it, as though he were translating from a foreign language, and a vague, wild idea filled his brain that her voice was the murmur of the voices of the damned heard from afar off. If she would only have cried, or seemed less utterly hopeless, he would have burst all bonds of conventional restraint in his endeavour to comfort her; but this low, rapid, almost silent torrent of speech overwhelmed him. He knew that the flood-gates of her long-pent soul were open, and that to attempt to make her cling to him to try to comfort her by words, or to appease her longing by telling of his own yearning, would have given a less than transient relief. Nevertheless he trembled at her reproach, but most of all under her sad, true eyes.

‘I have sinned fearfully against my husband. I sinned in marrying him. I have sinned in yearning after you. I am sinning at this moment in speaking to you, and my life has been one long torment ever since my sins first began, but I have had one hope that has sustained me throughout it all, and that hope was that you would not have misjudged me, and now you tear that one little joy from my heart. It was all I had, and now that is gone. Only — only—’ The click of the handle of the door caused a new light that he could not understand dart across her eyes like lightning, and instinctively his eyes followed hers to the door, and thus it was that he could only half-understand her meaning in the words that followed. ‘Only, I have your present still.’